One of the biggest hurdles in the way of Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition deal to buy Activision Blizzard appears to have fallen as UK regulators have announced a provisional finding that the acquisition would not harm competition.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority previously was sceptical of Microsoft’s promises to keep the “Call of Duty” military shooter franchise available on PlayStation consoles for years to come.
At the time they indicated Xbox could have a financial incentive to pull the blockbuster series from the platform in the future. Now though they’ve received more detailed information about “Call of Duty” player spending.
The result? Making the “Call of Duty” game series exclusive to Xbox would lose Microsoft so much money that there is no incentive for them to do so. The CMA says in a press release:
“The CMA inquiry group has updated its provisional findings and reached the provisional conclusion that, overall, the transaction will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in relation to console gaming in the UK.
While the CMA’s original analysis indicated that this strategy would be profitable under most scenarios, new data (which provides better insight into the actual purchasing behaviour of CoD gamers) indicates that this strategy would be significantly loss-making under any plausible scenario.
On this basis, the updated analysis now shows that it would not be commercially beneficial to Microsoft to make CoD exclusive to Xbox following the deal, but that Microsoft will instead still have the incentive to continue to make the game available on PlayStation.”
The agency is said to still be investigating the cloud gaming aspect of the acquisition deal. Their final verdict is not due for another four weeks.
Microsoft has been busy in recent months making deals with smaller competitors to guarantee its first-party games will be available on other services outside of Xbox to help the deal go through.
The obvious question is what will be the final arrangement made between Microsoft and Sony. Previously Microsoft has been offering a ten-year deal to Sony that would see the ‘Duty’ franchise available on the console throughout the PS5’s entire life and almost all of a potential PS6’s life should the console refresh cycle stick to the usual seven years.
One thing to be determined will be the availability of Activision Blizzard games on Sony’s Game Pass competitor PlayStation Plus.
Microsoft also still needs to get approval from European regulators and deal with an antitrust lawsuit by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Even so, stocks in Activision have already rallied to the news – hitting some of their highest numbers in months.
Source: Kotaku
